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In a reprise of his famous argument against DRM delivered to Microsoft executives in 2004, Cory Doctorow recently appeared before book publishers at the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference to explain to leaders of the publishing industry why DRM on digital books is bad for customers, bad for authors, and bad for business.

Cory reminded his audience of something they have probably already heard from their own customers: no one likes DRM.

No one woke up this morning and thought, "gee, I wish there was a way I could do less with my music, maybe someone's offering that product today."

When President Obama – in one of his first official acts – committed his new administration to an "unprecedented" level of transparency, EFF applauded the change in policy. Likewise, when Attorney General Holder, at the President's direction, issued new guidelines liberalizing agency implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we welcomed it as a "particularly promising development." But we also noted that it remained to be seen whether reality would match the rhetoric as the new policy was applied, particularly in the context of pending lawsuits – several of which EFF is pursuing – that challenge Bush-era decisions to withhold requested information.

Last month, the US Sentencing Commission considered new sentencing guidelines that would classify the use of proxy servers as "sophisticated means" when used in the commission of a crime, thus requiring extra prison time. EFF spoke out against these guidelines, sending Staff Technologist Seth Schoen to appear before the Commission to argue (PDF) that the use of anonymizing technologies is a widespread practice that requires no special knowledge or skills.

Happily, it appears the Commission has decided, at least for now, not to classify the use of proxies as a sign of sophistication.

The free expression community lost a giant with the passing last weekend of Judith Krug, longtime director of the American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom. Dating back to the late 1960s, Judith was one of the nation's fiercest defenders of the First Amendment, often provoking the ire of those who sought to remove material they didn't like – for a variety of subjective (and usually narrow) reasons – from the shelves of our libraries.

The New York Times story with new revelations of surveillance abuses under the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program is making big news today (Associated Press, Washington Post, Salon,) as well it should. Beyond the allegations of an out-of-control spying program, the story casts new light on last spring's surveillance battle in Congress.

We have often observed that one of the most pernicious aspects of U.S. copyright law is the outrageously disproportionate statutory damages an infringer may have to pay--from $750 to $150,000 per work, no matter how minimal the actual harm caused by the infringement. And we are not alone: last September, after a jury awarded $222,000 in damages based on a peer to peer file-sharer's alleged infringement of just 24 songs, a federal judge implored Congress to revisit the damages provisions of the Copyright Act. The threat of a similar award (however unlikely) has chilled far too many fair uses--few people are willing to gamble with their life savings even if they firmly believe their use is legal.

The New York Timesreported today that the National Security Agency (NSA) "had been engaged in 'over-collection' of domestic communications of Americans," by which the NSA would spy on "groups of Americans and collect their domestic communications without proper court authority." According to the Times, a review conducted over the course of the Presidential transition revealed "that the N.S.A. was improperly capturing information involving significant amounts of American traffic."